Sausage with Side Orders

I had harboured a plan to visit the local allotment. The folk who inhabit such places strike me as characterful, with hardy hands and faces. As interesting as the allotment buildings themselves. Some of the buildings don't seemed to have been opened for years. The timbers have aged gray and buckled, and at each corner of the glazing there will be mumified remains held firm in dense webs from way back. Others have little fairyland 'elbowed' chimney stacks. I imagined striking up a convivial chat with one or two of them, re-visiting season after season, and photographing them in their shacks, with all manner of implements hung from the walls, seed trays and pots of every size imaginable, today's papers and a load more for recycling, and perhaps a kettle and radio for sitting down or visitors.

Next door to the allotment is a car park serving the Leam Valley Nature Reserve. It's where I stopped. There's a bridge over the Leam leading to the reserve. Wherever there's a bridge, a weakness of mine directs I am to stand on it for a while and then cross to the other side, just in case I discover anything. On the other side was a path disappearing out of view. Paths which disappear out of view also summon the same weakness.

As I closed in on that part of the path which could not be seen from the bridge, so it started to rain. I noticed little ripples on the river at first, but within seconds the rain was at full pelt again. Just as it had been precisely 24 hours earlier.

Now, getting caught out in heavy rain yesterday was, with the benefit of hindsight, something I could laugh about. By when today I felt those first splashes I was reminded the joke wasn't all that funny after all. And by when it got so heavy the path was a low wall of fizzy water, so much so that I ducked along a mucky, leaf ridden, tree-lined lane in search of shelter, the position I found myself in fairly remsembled yesterday's. I hung around for 10 minutes till when I heard it subside, edged back to the path, took a few strides and then retreated when it returned with ovwewhelming force. The rain would not moderate, so committed to avoiding a repetition of yesterday's return home and throwing caution to the wind, I legged it to the car.

Inside, I sat with the heater on full blast listening to news about Syria and ebola, and snapping shots of a tree outside through rain running down the side window. Twenty minutes or so after that and a little more comfortable but still miserable, I thought to jolly myself up with some sausage, egg, chips and beans from Morrisons.